As society developed and people started to gather together they began to play games. Typically, a game is a structured competition between players with some sort of outcome, which can range from winning to losing or tying as well as completing a stage, goal, or task. There are numerous types of games available for play. Games can be played for a number of reasons, and often games are played between people (i.e., the players).
As technology has advanced into and through the computing age, games have followed and have been developed in various computing formats and for different numbers of simultaneous players. The rise of the internet has also resulted in games being played between players from different geographical locations, where friends or strangers can play together online. An example can include the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with thousands of simultaneous players that usually play intermittently over a continuous period of time, which MMORPG may have (or had) a beginning but may or may not have a definitive ending. While there are many different types of MMORPGs, these games often take significant time and practice to become an adept player that is successful at a certain game. Since becoming skilled in a certain game takes some time, players may prefer to play games in which they have invested more time, in which they have more skill, or in which they have learned how to be successful.